The following is a small excerpt from Chapter 11 of Stop Feeding Us Lies.
“Grass grows by taking CO2 out of the air. With the help of energy from sunshine and water from rainfall, grass converts atmospheric CO2 into molecules of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these carbohydrate molecules, called cellulose, are used to create new blades of grass and some, which are more simple sugars, are passed down the plant and into the roots. To keep the arithmetic simple let’s assume a blade of grass absorbs 100 molecules of CO2 and that 80 of them are used for growth and 20 of those carbon atoms go down to the roots, where they will stay if the ground is left undisturbed.
Constance the cow comes along and eats all of those 80 carbon atoms in the grass. The bacteria in her rumen get to work and convert plant cellulose into the fatty acids and proteins that Constance needs to grow. A by-product of this process is methane gas which is produced at a rate of approximately 5% of the food Constance eats. Therefore for every 100 molecules of CO2 absorbed by grass, cows return 4 or 5 of them to the air as methane. Simple arithmetic and basic biology show it is impossible for cows, or sheep, to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They simply recycle a few of them.”
The NHS directive on healthy eating is known as the Eatwell Guide; never has an official document been so incorrectly named. One of the many fallacies it contains is the recommendation to replace natural fats like butter, lard, dripping and ghee with polyunsaturated ‘vegetable’ oils
This is from the NHS website, Choose unsaturated oils and spreads, and eat in small amounts. Unsaturated fats are healthier fats and include vegetable, rapeseed, olive and sunflower oils. Remember all types of fat are high in energy and should be eaten sparingly.
They make the claim that ‘unsaturated’ fats are healthier (than what?) without providing any evidence. They also make the mistake of suggesting that we should limit fat intake because it contains more calories (than carbohydrates). [This fallacy is debunked elsewhere on this site.] The quoted list of ‘healthy’ oils includes vegetable which is a misleading catch-all term for oils which do not come from animals – it is not a specific oil. Bottles in the supermarket labelled Vegetable Oil are usually blends of cheap seed oils. Rapeseed and sunflower oils are extracted from seeds with an industrial, high temperature and solvent process. Olive oil comes from the fruit of the olive tree and can be obtained by simply pressing the olives. Olive oil has been consumed for about 6,000 years, whereas industrial seed oils have been eaten for only the one hundred years since their extraction method was invented. The last one hundred years coincides with the greatest decline in human health that we know of.
What is wrong with seed oils?
There is nothing natural or healthy about the way in which they are made;
Seeds are gathered from the soy, corn, cotton, safflower, and rapeseed plants.
The seeds are heated to extremely high temperatures, which causes the unsaturated fatty acids in the seeds to oxidize. These oxidised by-products that are harmful to human health.
A petroleum-based solvent, such as hexane, is used to maximize the amount of oil extracted.
Seed oil manufacturers then use chemicals to deodorize the oils, which have a very unpleasant smell. The deodorization process produces trans fats, which are well known to be quite harmful to human health.
Finally, more chemicals are added to improve the colour.
The first edible seed oils were made in America by two soap manufacturers called Proctor and Gamble. They started making soap with cottonseed oil, which was regarded as a toxic waste product from the cotton industry. They soon realised that cottonseed oil could be ‘hydrogenated’ into something resembling lard and they sold it as a substitute for traditional cooking fat under the name Crisco. They had managed to turn ‘toxic waste’ into a food substitute. ‘Vegetable’ oil was not a scientist’s health promoting discovery. It was a heavily advertised profit opportunity, which soon went from just cooking oil to the butter substitute margarine. Proctor and Gamble were now a big company and they gave large sums of money to the recently formed American Heart Association. In return, the AHA promoted P&G’s seed oil concoctions as ‘heart healthy’, without any genuine evidence to prove their claim.
What else is wrong with seed oils?
They do not fit with our evolution. Our bodies evolved over millions of years in response to our environment and the food we ate. Seed oils contain a high proportion of a fatty acid called linoleic acid. It is estimated that the average diet now contains 8 times as much linoleic acid as our distant ancestors used to consume. Our genetic make-up and biological systems cannot cope with such a large dose of this one ingredient.
The omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is wrong. There are certain essential fatty acids that we need to thrive but cannot make. We have to eat these in our food and they are known as omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-6 acids give rise to inflammation and omega-3 acids are anti-inflammatory. Our ancient diets had a ratio between these two opposing actions of approximately 1 to 1 and our bodies were, therefore, in balance. Seed oils contain considerably more omega-6 relative to omega-3 and many western diets have a ratio of up to 20 to 1. This imbalance produces a state of chronic inflammation that contributes to numerous chronic diseases.
The polyunsaturated fatty acids in industrial seed oils are highly unstable. They oxidize easily upon exposure to heat and light, creating two harmful substances—trans fats and lipid peroxides. Trans fats are well known for their role in the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes; in fact, for every 2 percent increase in calories from trans fats, your risk of heart disease is nearly doubled. Lipid peroxides are toxic by-products that damage DNA, proteins, and membrane lipids throughout the body. The accumulation of lipid peroxides in the body promotes aging and the development of chronic diseases. Restaurants, fast food outlets and fish and chip shops fry their food in seed oils. Every time the oils are reheated they create more toxic by-products.
They contain unhealthy additives. Because the fatty acids in industrial seed oils are so unstable, synthetic antioxidants are added in an attempt to prevent the oils from turning rancid. These chemicals are not healthy. They have hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing, and immunity-disrupting properties. One of them, known as TBHQ, has been found to increase the risk of food allergies.
The NHS tells us to replace the naturally occurring, animal-derived fats like butter and lard with these unnatural, industrial, toxic, inflammation-inducing concoctions because they are the ‘healthy choice’. Our population has never been more unhealthy. The NHS Eatwell Guide is wrong.
In writing a National Food Strategy, you have been tasked with a job which carries a huge workload and equally large responsibility. I commend you on all your hard work. I believe you have produced your plan with a genuine desire to improve the food system in the United Kingdom. There are aspects of your work with which I totally agree: we are an overweight, unhealthy nation because of the poor quality of our diet, and we must change the way we eat to improve health and unburden the NHS. However, there are parts of your strategy with which I totally disagree.
I am a retired Pharmacist. I left my profession feeling frustrated and disillusioned because so many people were taking their medication diligently but never getting better. The drugs were treating the symptoms of their disease but not the root cause. I spent almost 5 years researching and writing a book about why so many people in Britain are ill. It took me so long because I covered a great deal more than just food and because I had to overcome my preconceived biases. I used to be an Olympic Athlete and I believed that everyone would be healthier with more exercise. The more research I did, the more I realised my assumptions were wrong. Whilst exercise is important for good health, the real problem is the food we eat. There is so much misinformation, dogma and downright corruption in the world of food and health I called my book Stop Feeding Us Lies.
I argue that the dietary advice given by the NHS is responsible for the obesity epidemic and all the co-morbidities that go with it. This situation has continued for decades because the hierarchy in the Health Service never steps back and asks itself, ‘Are all of the assumptions we work with factually correct?’ Groupthink has taken over and the experts and the media endlessly repeat the same story, which nobody bothers to examine. I am sorry to say, Mr Dimbleby, I believe you may be guilty of the same thing. You have completely accepted some of the dogma of the day and you appear not to have questioned your assumptions. I believe these assumptions are wrong, which means that parts of your argument are spurious because they are built upon fallacies.
I was somewhat surprised that in a 289-page report on Food Strategy there is no mention of the nutritional benefits of different foods. Surely this is by far the most important factor in any dietary policy? The only nutritional measurement you mention are calories. You seem to think we will reduce obesity by eating fewer calories. This approach has been tried for decades and always fails. Weight is controlled by hormones, mainly insulin, and hormones are affected by the type of food we eat. This was proved in 1956 by Kekwick and Pawan and published in the Lancet. They demonstrated that eating fat does not make us fat; it is carbohydrate that makes us fat. Natural fats do not raise insulin levels and therefore do not increase fat storage. Fats, especially animal fats, have been demonised for decades without any robust evidence against them. However, you quote the oft repeated mantra about reducing food high in ‘sugar, salt and fat’. Indeed, you want to tax sugar and salt.
‘Sugar, salt and fat’ is repeated in the media as if all three are interchangeable in their health-destroying properties. There is no human requirement to eat sugar, nor the carbohydrates from which it is derived. Too much sugar leads to health problems ranging from tooth decay, mood swings and acne all the way to diabetes, blindness, heart disease and amputations. We need to reduce our sugar consumption. Salt, however, is an essential nutrient; our blood is a saline solution and sodium is needed for the transmission of every nerve impulse. People have died of hyponatreamia, or lack of sodium, at running events when they have drunk too much water. Salt is essential for life but you want to put a large tax on it. Fat is also essential for our health; all our cell membranes are made of fat molecules and our brain structure is 65% fat. You are hoping to tax manufacturers into reformulating their food to reduce these three ingredients. What sort of chemicals do you imagine they will substitute them with? Food labels already read like an inventory for a chemistry lab.
Instead of changing the ingredient list in manufactured meals, you should be recommending that people change from eating ultra-processed food and spend more time cooking their own real, natural food. I understand that for many people both time and cost are issues, which make this difficult. The health benefits, however, are so obvious the message should be spoken loud and clear. Fresh food from a farmer or fisherman will always be nutritionally superior to food from a factory. Why not promote home cooking at every opportunity?
You recommend that we all reduce our meat intake by 30%. We became the dominant species on the planet because of our large brains. We evolved excellent brains because our ancestors ate the meat and fat of the big animals they chased and caught. Red meat is the most nutrient-dense, easily absorbed food humans can consume (along with liver and eggs). The fat in our brain structure is largely animal derived. Indeed, 12 % of our brain is made of the omega3 fatty acid DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). DHA is essential for a multitude of processes in the brain and some neurologists suggest that conscious thought is impossible without it. There is no DHA in the fruit and vegetables you recommend. There is also no Vitamin B12 in plants. B12 is essential for the production of red blood cells and the myelin sheath that surrounds all our nerve fibers. Persuading us to eat less meat will inevitably lead some people into nutrient deficiencies which will damage their health and further burden the NHS.
Taking a broader view of your National Food Strategy, it is not really about food: it is about land usage and climate change. Your document mentions vitamins seven times, climate change 112 times and methane 109 times. This is the other area where it seems you have not failed to question your assumptions and made no attempt to challenge the dogma of the day. There is a powerful anti-meat lobby which constantly promotes the idea that eating red meat is bad for our health and for the climate. Both these claims are wrong. You have written page after page of anti-meat propaganda, which does not stand up to scrutiny. You perpetuate some of the most extreme views I have ever read. I quote, ‘The methane produced by ruminants is estimated to have caused a third of total global warming since the industrial revolution.’ Do you believe, Mr Dimbleby, that the digestive system of cows is a major influence on the climate of this planet? GCSE level biology explains why this cannot be true.
Grass grows by taking CO2 out of the air. With the help of energy from sunshine and water from rainfall, grass converts atmospheric CO2 into molecules of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Some of these carbohydrate molecules, called cellulose, are used to create new blades of grass and some, which are more simple sugars, are passed down the plant and into the roots. To keep the arithmetic simple, let us assume a blade of grass absorbs 100 molecules of CO2 and that 80 of them are used for growth and 20 of those carbon atoms go down to the roots, where they will stay if the ground is left undisturbed. A cow comes along and eats all those 80 carbon atoms in the grass. The bacteria in her rumen get to work and convert plant cellulose into the fatty acids and proteins that the animal needs to grow. A by-product of this process is methane gas which is produced at a rate of approximately 5% of the food eaten. Therefore, for every 100 molecules of CO2 absorbed by grass, cows return 4 or 5 of them to the air as methane. Simple arithmetic and basic biology show it is impossible for cows, or sheep, to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They simply recycle a few of them.
You correctly state that methane in the atmosphere is oxidised to CO2 after about a decade, but you stress that it is a much more potent greenhouse gas. In laboratories, that appears to be true, but in the real world it is not true. Water vapour is the most effective greenhouse gas by far. It accounts for 90% of all the heat trapped in the atmosphere; the heat which stops us all from freezing to death. Methane only absorbs infra-red radiation at wavelengths of 3.3 and 7.5 microns. Water vapour is very active at those wavelengths and any effect methane might have is completely masked by the action of water. Methane, therefore, has no significant effect on the temperature.
History, as well as physics, proves your statement is wrong. Ruminant animals evolved about 50 million years ago and they have been burping methane throughout all the hot periods and ice ages of that enormous timescale. The figure below shows atmospheric methane levels over the last 1,000 years, measured by ice-core samples. Methane remained remarkably constant until the Industrial Revolution. During the first 800 years of this graph there were an estimated 65 million bison roaming the grasslands of the American Midwest.
I quote you again, Mr Dimbleby, ‘If all the ruminants on earth mysteriously vanished tomorrow, it would take roughly twelve years for the methane they have already produced to leave the atmosphere almost completely. After a couple more decades, the temperature of the planet would have cooled to the same temperature as if those animals had never existed.’
The second figure, below, shows the fluctuations of temperature over the last 2,000 years. Focussing on the last 1,000 years we can compare methane levels, above, with temperature. The methane graph begins with the height of the Medieval Warm Period. Temperature then cools until we are plunged (by the Dalton Solar Minimum) into the Little Ice Age. Temperatures begin to warm again in the early 1700s. Throughout all these temperature fluctuations, methane levels stayed exactly the same. They had no effect on warming or cooling. Whoever you have been listening to, Mr Dimbleby, has led you up the garden path and you have taken them at their word.
You give a passing mention to regenerative agriculture but fail to emphasise its huge benefits to soil health and fertility. Allan Savory has proved that increasing the number of ruminants on the land improves soil fertility and the ground’s ability to absorb and store water. We should have more cattle and sheep on the land and in our diet, rather than less.
NASA satellites have clearly shown that the recent increase in CO2 (plant food) has enabled vegetation to thrive and the world is considerably greener now than when carbon dioxide levels were lower.
There is so much more I could say, but I will make this final comment. You recommend a nationally approved diet and a land use plan overseen by the Government. Do you really believe that Boris Johnson and his cronies could provide better stewardship of the land than experienced farmers, who have been educated in the benefits of regenerative agriculture? Do you think a ‘national diet’ will be free from the influence of global food corporations and their processed fake-food? I, for one, do not.
The following quotes are all comments voluntarily made by people who used to be vegan and went back to eating meat. It is fascinating how many people say their health improved to a remarkable level.
Many years ago, we were warned about the dangers of ‘global warming’. The name for this impending doom was later altered to ‘climate change’. Presumably, this was done so that whatever happened to the climate, our self-indulgent way of life could be blamed. The media have now started to ramp up the fear by referring to this concept as the ‘climate crisis’ or ‘climate emergency’. Daily fearmongering across mainstream media has shown that people can be persuaded to believe implausible ideas if they have already been made to feel sufficiently scared.
Outrageous notions are now coming thick and fast. Recently, we had the Cabinet Minister, Kwazi Kwarteng, telling us we must go vegan to ‘save the planet’. In the Times Magazine of April 24th, there is an article which attempts to rank foods by their greenhouse gas emissions. The piece is inspired by “one of Britain’s top scientists”, who has written a book about food and climate. The top scientist is a Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy. She has become a vegan because of what she believes to be the greenhouse gas emissions produced by livestock.
The headlines in the article included ‘Butter is five times worse for the environment than vegetable spread’ and ‘Eating a large steak is equivalent to driving a fossil-fuelled car for 40 miles’. My first thought was that if I drove 40 miles I would still be hungry, but if I ate a large steak I would be satiated and well-nourished. Sadly, the extraordinary level of misinformation in this is article is no laughing matter.
There are two major problems the Professor has failed to understand. The first one is basic biology and the second is the purpose of food.
1.The rhetoric goes along these lines: cows belch methane; methane is a greenhouse gas; we need to get rid of cows. People who push this idea insist we must stop eating meat because farm livestock are responsible for ‘emissions’ which are so huge they are heating the planet to dangerous levels. The thing none of them seem to grasp is that it is impossible for cows and sheep to emit greenhouse gases; they can only recycle some of them.
Cows and sheep only eat plants. A lot of people think plants grow out of the ground, but this is not strictly true: they are rooted in the ground and get water and minerals from the ground but they grow out of the air. Every carbon atom in the structure of a plant was taken out of the air, as carbon dioxide, during photosynthesis. When animals eat and then digest those carbon atoms to create their own structure, the process produces methane gas, as a byproduct, at a rate of about 5% of the food eaten. After a few years in the atmosphere that methane is converted to CO2 and the ‘carbon cycle’ continues, as it has for tens of millions of years.
When we drive a car 40 miles, we burn carbon-rich fuel, which has been stored underground for millions of years. Therefore, cars emit greenhouse gases which add to the total in the atmosphere whereas cattle recycle some, which does not add to the total. This basic difference seems to be totally ignored in reports on this subject.
We are often told that cattle farming is ‘unsustainable’. This, of course, depends on how it is done. When the settlers and farmers from Europe arrived on the plains of mid-west America, they found the most fertile soil they had ever seen and in places it was between six and ten feet deep. That soil existed because 75 million bison and deer had roamed the land, for thousands of years, eating the grass that grew there and leaving their ‘manure’ upon it, before moving on. This process involves a symbiotic relationship between ruminant animals, grassland plants and trillions of bacteria and fungi in the soil. Universities and farmers around the world have proved that regular movement of herds of livestock to fresh grass, in a way which mimics nature, increases carbon storage in the ground and simultaneously improves soil fertility. Wild herds of ruminants have been doing this for 50 million years; a timescale which suggests to me that it is ‘sustainable’.
One hundred years ago those American farmers were growing wheat on as much of that land as they could because wheat prices were high. They did so much ploughing and planting of a single crop, they turned those deep, fertile soils into what became known as the ‘dust bowl’. The grass, which had covered the prairies for a million years, was turned over; the fungal network was destroyed; the land dried out; and when a period of drought came, the soil was turned to dust and blown by the wind, across the country, as huge, dark clouds. Thousands of farmers were made bankrupt and there was an enormous exodus of people from the mid-west to California, in search of work. The US Government bought millions of acres of land and replanted it with the original prairie grass. History shows us that it is mono-crop arable farming which is unsustainable.
2. In the Times Magazine article the Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy listed a wide variety of foods and quoted the supposed emissions of each. Throughout the article, however, there is no mention of the nutritional value of any food, which is, surely, an essential factor in our diet. Suggesting that we should eat vegetable spread instead of butter, for example, ignores the fact that butter is a natural product with considerable quantities of vitamins A, B12, D, E and K2 and omega-3 fatty acids. Vegetable spread is a highly processed, unnatural food substitute usually made from sunflower oil. This oil contains high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, which are known to increase inflammation. Chronic inflammation is linked to heart disease, arthritis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and age-related macular degeneration.
Plant foods contain no vitamin B12. A deficiency of this essential nutrient can lead to brain atrophy in children, psychosis, hallucinations, weakness, unsteady gait, fatigue, irritability, loss of appetite, weight loss, symptoms of depression and megaloblastic anaemia. Sadly, many people, like the Professor, are willing to risk the health consequences of a vegan diet because, somehow, they have been persuaded that the climate of this planet is controlled by the digestive system of cows. A far bigger problem, which is not being tackled, is the enormous burden of obesity, diabetes and all the related metabolic disorders suffered by millions. This health catastrophe is intricately linked to a diet containing too much processed, fake-food and not enough nutrient-dense real food, like butter and meat.
The list below contains extracts from the official dietary advice of a wide range of health authorities. They all recommend either caution or avoidance of a plant only diet for pregnant women and children. This list was compiled by the excellent website Aleph2020
The dietary guidelines, which the NHS want us all to follow, advise a high percentage of carbohydrate and a reduction in animal sourced fats. These excerpts, below, are taken directly from the NHS website.
We need to remember that all carbohydrates are broken down by digestion into sugar molecules, usually glucose. So the NHS recommends that over a third of your intake should consist of foods that your body regards as sugar. They also recommend that the natural animal fats which our ancestors have eaten for millennia should be replaced with vegetable oils.
Many decades ago a lot of people were thin and some were very thin. A product was developed and heavily advertised to help those people gain weight. Appropriately, it was called Wate-On. The adverts typically suggested to women that they would be more attractive to men if they gained some ‘female curves’ by adding a little subcutaneous fat.
The manufacturers were so confident that their product worked they offered a money back guarantee if you failed to gain weight after taking it.
What ingredients did Wate-On contain to ensure people taking it would increase their weight. There were some added vitamins to give the product a ‘healthy’ profile but the two main ingredients were sugar and maize oil. Maize oil is the same thing as Corn oil.
Putting more weight on is very rarely an objective for people nowadays because 65% of the UK population are overweight and more than 25% are obese. How did we become so heavy? We became so heavy because we have been following the NHS advice to consume the ingredients of Wate-On, sugar and corn oil.
Everybody in the UK loves the NHS. We have just given up a year of our freedoms to ‘save it’. Parts of the NHS do a wonderful job but their official dietary advice is a national scandal of out-dated misinformation. What they call the Eatwell Guide is nothing of the sort. It is the reason we have an obesity crisis and surging levels of type 2 diabetes. We would all be so much better off if we ignored what they say about food and ate the diet our ancestors ate.
Vitamin A is usually associated with good vision and especially night vision. As a child I was always told to ‘eat my carrots so I could see in the dark’. While it is true that vitamin A is vital for vision, it also has a multitude of beneficial functions throughout the body. However, it is not true to list carrots as a source of this essential vitamin. The biologically active form of vitamin A is called retinol, because it is so prevalent in the retina of the eye. Carrots and other brightly coloured vegetables contain no vitamin A. They contain a pre-cursor to retinol known as carotene or beta-carotene, which has to be converted to the active form before it can do it’s work. This conversion is never very efficient and quite difficult for some people. Genetic variations, too much fibre in the diet, a lack of bile salts and eating raw vegetables can all play their part in making the transition from carotene to retinol more difficult. Healthy individuals without these problems convert beta-carotene to retinol at a ration of about 6:1, which means they need to eat 6 molecules of beta-carotene to absorb one molecule of true vitamin A.
A study from Newcastle University on a group of women showed that 47% of them had a gene variant that made it difficult or impossible to convert beta-carotene into active vitamin A. It is easy, therefore, for some people to become deficient if they do not consume retinol in their food.
The only dietary sources of the active form of vitamin A are found in animal foods. Liver and eggs are the most abundant. Vitamin A gets very little attention compared to vitamins C and D, which is unfortunate because it is absolutely vital for our health and for the proper development of babies and children. It has such a profound effect on our health because it regulates the action of over five hundred genes in the body, which makes it a major controller of all of our cells and how they function.
Long before we knew what vitamin A is, ancient people from around the world were aware that eating liver could prevent or reverse blindness. The Egyptians described it at least 3500 years ago: Assyrian texts dating from 700 BC and Chinese medical writings from the 7th century AD both call for the use of liver in the treatment of night blindness. It has also been written about in 18th-century Russia and among the inhabitants of Newfoundland in 1929. 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates prescribed liver for blindness in malnourished children. Despite all this knowledge, vitamin A deficiency is still the leading cause of blindness in some parts of the world. It is extraordinary that all this ancient knowledge is ignored and the NHS recommends that pregnant mothers should avoid eating liver in case they consume toxic levels. (More about this later.)
Vitamin A helps to prevent us from becoming ill; it keeps our immune system from overreacting; it is necessary for growth and reproduction. We need vitamin A for building bones and teeth, and for the actions of our hormones. It is essential for the development of a foetus into a perfectly formed human baby. These are major roles, which are vitally important for our health.
Babies
A developing human foetus needs to change stem cells into the appropriate cells to construct heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, eyes, brains, head, shoulders, knees and toes. This process requires the presence of adequate levels of Vitamin A. Slight abnormalities will occur if there is insufficient retinol. If there is a serious deficiency in the mother, major defects can arise resulting in miscarriage or the new-born being unable to survive. Recent studies have shown that an insufficiency in maternal retinol can lead to a slight defect in the lungs giving rise to childhood asthma.
Immunity
Vitamin A is vital for the development and maintenance of skin and all our mucous membranes. These are the wet surfaces which make up the nose, mouth, digestive tract and lungs. They appear to be inside the body but, strictly speaking, they are external. They are the surfaces through which viruses and bacteria can gain access to the body and, therefore, their integrity is a vital first defence in our immune system. Optimum levels of Vitamin A maintain these membranes and protect us from infection, including from the coronavirus giving rise to Covid19.
These are some references I have found in other articles about Vitamin A
Vitamin A supplementation of children in Asia and Africa has been extremely effective in reducing the rates of infection, diarrhoea, anaemia and blindness (Reuter’s 2/12/01).
African and Asian children receiving vitamin-A supplements grow faster, have better haemoglobin values and die 30-60 percent less frequently than non-supplemented peers (J Nutr Jan 1989 119(1):96-100).
Vitamin A supplementation of children in Asia and Africa has been extremely effective in reducing the rates of infection, diarrhoea, anaemia and blindness (Reuter’s 2/12/01).
Vitamin A plays a vital regulating role in the immune system. Vitamin A deficiency leads to a loss of ciliated cells in the lung, an important first line defence against pathogens. Vitamin A promotes mucin secretion and microvilli formation by mucosa, including the gastrointestinal tract mucosa. Vitamin A regulates T-cell production and apoptosis (programmed cell death) (Nutrition Reviews 1998;56:S38-S48). These are all important functions in the fight against Covid19.
Treatment with mega doses of vitamin A (100,000 IU per day) resulted in a 92 percent cure rate of menorrhagia (excessive menstrual bleeding) at Johannesburg General Hospital in South Africa (S Afr Med J 1977).
Lack of vitamin A interferes with optimal function of the hippocampus, the main seat of learning. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, found that removing vitamin A from the diets of mice diminished chemical changes in the brain considered the hallmarks of learning and memory (Proc Natl Acad Sci, Sep 25, 2001 98(20):11714-9). Children need a good supply of Vitamin A to succeed academically.
Vitamin A can be helpful in the treatment of psoriasis. Researchers found that patients suffering from severe psoriasis had low blood levels of vitamin A (Acta Derm Venereol Jul 1994 74(4):298-301). Elderly persons who consume adequate vitamin A are less prone to leg ulcers (Veris Newsletter Dec 1999;15(4):5).
In stroke victims, those with high levels of vitamin A are more likely to recover without damage (The Lancet, Mar 25, 1998, pp 47-50).
Vitamin A protects against lung and bladder cancers in men (Alt Cancer Inst Monogr Dec 1985 69:137-42). Fourteen out of 20 patients with prostate cancer achieved total remission and five achieved partial remission using vitamin A as part of a natural cancer therapy in Germany (Drugs Exp Clin Res 2000;26(65-6):249-52).
Official advice
The NHS advises pregnant women not to take too much vitamin A and to avoid foods rich in retinol, like liver. This section below is copied from the NHS website.
Why do they say this? A study published in 1995 suggested that large doses of active vitamin A could cause birth defects in babies. It received a great deal of publicity and guidelines were altered because of it. Medical staff involved in obstetrics and paediatrics repeat this advice because they are fearful of being sued if a child is born with defects and they have not given this warning.
In the study, researchers asked over 22,000 women to respond to questionnaires about their eating habits and supplement intake before and during pregnancy. Their responses were used to determine vitamin-A status. As reported in the newspapers, researchers found that cranial-neural-crest defects increased with increased dosages of vitamin A; what the papers did not report was the fact that neural tube defects decreased with increased vitamin A consumption, and that no trend was apparent with musculoskeletal, urogenital or other defects. The trend was much less pronounced, and less statistically significant, when cranial-neural-crest defects were correlated with vitamin-A consumption from food alone.
There are many problems with this study. It is based on unreliable food frequency questionnaires, which were used to calculate vitamin A status but no measurements of blood levels were taken. They did not highlight the difference between vitamin A from supplements and from natural sources in food. Distinctions between synthetic and natural vitamin A have been absent in the extensive media coverage of this study. In fact, the newspaper reports contain implied warnings against pregnant women eating liver, dairy products, meat and eggs, but none against eating fabricated foods like margarine and breakfast cereals to which synthetic vitamin A is added. And there has been no media coverage for subsequent studies, which found that high levels of vitamin A did not increase the risk of birth defects. A study carried out in Rome found no congenital malformations among 120 infants exposed to more than 50,000 IU of vitamin A per day. A study from Switzerland looked at blood levels of vitamin A in pregnant women and found that a dose of 30,000 IU per day resulted in blood levels that had no association with birth defects. Just like so many other things in nutritional advice, the narrative has been set in stone and it is going to be difficult to change it.
What should you do?
I have shown a selection of the vitally important contributions vitamin A makes to our health. The NHS advises pregnant women not to eat vitamin A rich foods because of one observational study and ignores other studies with opposite outcomes. I do not want to tell anybody what to do, but I do want you to think about what makes sense.
Ancient people were very good at observation; they knew that eating liver could cure night blindness. I find it very difficult to believe they would have failed notice if pregnant women eating liver regularly gave birth to damaged babies. Nobody believed this happened until 1995.
Vitamin A is essential for correct development. How likely is it that evolution would give retinol this role but allow it to cause birth defects if you eat slightly too much?
Vitamins work in harmony with other vitamins and minerals. Taking high doses of one can cause problems because of an imbalance. If the NHS advised against high dose vitamin A supplements I would see no problem. But they do not; they advise against the consumption of real food, which our species has been eating for millions of years. A real food diet provides the balance of nutrients we need to function properly.
It has recently been announced the Government intends to introduce a carbon tax on meat, cheese and gas boilers as part of its commitment to tackling climate change. This is the conjunction of two ideas, which are constantly repeated in the media and believed by a great many people, even though neither of them makes much sense. The first is the universally held belief that our climate is controlled by the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The second is the modern notion that the rearing and eating of meat is bad for us and the planet.
The climate of Earth is a complex and chaotic system influenced by many variables, which include changes in solar radiation, cloud cover, ocean currents, volcanic activity, planetary orbits and El Nino events. Changes in the climate occur slowly but continuously. For millions of years the planet has been either warming or cooling. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas with a concentration of 0.04% of the atmosphere. It has the ability to absorb a narrow band of energy and prevent that particular wavelength of heat from escaping to space. It can, therefore, be called a greenhouse gas. However, its effect on the climate is so small as to be insignificant when compared to water vapour and, more importantly, the sun. Boris Johnson’s belief that that he can turn down the thermostat of the entire planet by tweaking the level of CO2 is naïve and unproven. It also ignores the recent decline in solar activity which has created a Grand Solar Minimum; an event likely to decrease global temperatures.
An interesting website called Weather-Report.com collects daily data from 28 weather stations around the UK and they state, “For the last 22 years, the weather has been very stable; with no statistically significant change in temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed, sunshine, rainfall volume or duration.” World-wide observations also show that the climate crisis does not exist other than in the extrapolations of computer models.
NASA satellites have shown the increase in atmospheric CO2 over recent decades has made the Earth greener. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it is vital plant food. A further increase in CO2 would boost the growth of vegetation, but if extreme measures are taken to reduce levels to below 0.02%, the zealots of ‘climate-change’ risk crop failures and famine because plants cannot grow below that concentration of carbon dioxide.
Despite all this evidence, Boris Johnson is going to push through legislation to ban petrol cars and gas boilers. As with lockdowns to contain a virus, he has not given the slightest thought to the consequences. He has no plan to replace all that energy with a viable alternative. Solar panels covered in snow and stationary windmills during a lull cannot provide enough energy to heat our homes during cold winters. Man-made climate change is not real; it is an agenda which makes certain people a lot of money.
The other hoax which has been dove-tailed into this deception is the ‘eat less meat to save the planet’ agenda. The argument states that because ruminant animals, like cows and sheep, belch methane into the air they are adding to global warming and we must reduce their numbers. Even if you still believe that trace gases containing carbon trap enough heat to alter the climate, this argument is still nonsense. The methane is a by-product of a ruminant’s digestive system and involves up to 5% of the carbon atoms in their food. Cows and sheep eat plants and all the carbon in those plants was originally extracted from the air during photosynthesis. Farm animals do not emit carbon-containing trace gases; they recycle some of them. Ruminant animals evolved about 50 million years ago and have been belching methane throughout the many hot periods and ice-ages that have occurred across that timescale.
There is a huge and co-ordinated anti-meat movement operating across the world. It began in the 1860s with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which still has considerable influence over official dietary guidelines. The World Economic Forum has declared that by 2030, ‘you will eat less meat’, whether you like it or not. British newspapers have been paid considerable sums to write regular articles condemning the meat industry. An organisation called the EAT-Lancet Commission has devised a Planetary Diet, which has very strict limits on the consumption of any animal sourced foods. The idea of a prescribed diet for the whole planet is typical of authoritarian regimes who have no respect for the essential part that food plays in the world’s vast array of cultures, customs and environments. None of this is based on nutritional science; it is entirely driven by a group of people with a fervent desire to prevent everyone else from eating meat. The trick they are trying to perform is to reduce meat consumption to such a low level that livestock farming becomes unviable. Then there will be no alternative to a plant-based diet.
Meat is the most nutrient dense food we can eat. It contains all the essential amino acids we need and is referred to as complete protein. Meat contains a wide variety of vitamins and minerals. Many of these are in either the active form required by humans or in a more easily digested state than those in plants.
Long chain omega-3 fatty acids are often associated with fish and fish oils but red meat contains a significant amount of these vitally important fats too. They are usually referred to as DHA and EPA and plants do not contain any. They are essential for brain function and development; they help fight depression and anxiety; they reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and ADHD. DHA is a major component of the retina of the eye and is vital for vision.
Red meat is an excellent source of vitamin B12. It is essential for a multitude of functions related to both the circulatory and nervous systems. Plants possess neither of these structures and consequently contain no B12. A deficiency of this essential vitamin can lead to depression, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, hallucinations, seizures, anaemia, macular degeneration, failure to thrive, birth defects, brain atrophy (especially in children of vegan mothers) and severe cognitive decline.
It is typical of politicians to think they can alter the climate by making people pay more tax. I am genuinely frightened by how ill-informed our Government ministers are. A carbon tax on animal foods will not make one iota of difference to the climate but it will inevitably make nutritious food too expensive for the poorest people in society. These are the people who already suffer the worst levels of ill-health. Boris Johnson’s inability to consider the consequences of his virtue-signalling is about to make that situation even worse.
I urge you all, please, write to your MP and demand that a tax on animal foods never becomes law.
According to the latest Ispos MORI poll, confidence in the ability of the NHS to deal with people suffering from Covid-19 has declined. Their latest press release stated, “A clear majority of Britons are confident in the ability of the NHS to deal with those who are ill as a result of the virus, but this has fallen 12 points from November and now stands at the lowest level since the pandemic began. Meanwhile 35% are not confident the NHS can cope, up 11 points from November. Confidence is split along party lines, those favourable to the Conservatives are significantly more likely to be confident in the ability of the NHS to deal with the Coronavirus (72%) than those favourable to the Labour Party (56%).”
It seems inevitable that people will worry about the NHS becoming overwhelmed when we are told, every day, that this is happening. The only surprising thing about this poll is the degree to which people’s confidence in the health service is so partisan. People seem to believe their favourite political party can make the NHS work well, even though 99 per cent of MPs have no scientific background.
I believe there are more important questions to ask than the one used in this poll. For instance, ‘have the Government and Sage done everything they can to alleviate the danger of Covid infections?’, and ‘have the Government and Sage done a thorough analysis of the benefits compared to the harms of prolonged lockdowns?’ The answer to both these questions is a resounding no.
Covid-19 is a nasty, and sometimes, fatal disease for those who become infected. I believe it is sufficiently virulent that a nationwide effort to tackle it is entirely appropriate. However, to say I am disappointed by the response would be a huge understatement. In my opinion, what the Government and Sage have done, and more importantly have failed to do, amounts to gross negligence. These are some of their failings:
The UK suffers from very high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other components of metabolic syndrome. These diseases are caused by chronic, elevated blood sugar, which leads to insulin resistance. This enormous problem has been putting the NHS under pressure for decades. Doctors working independently, and contrary to official guidelines, have been able to reverse these conditions, without medication, by the adoption of a low carbohydrate diet. The authorities have made no attempt to change dietary guidelines despite relevant evidence from all over the world. This failure is vitally important because 95% of people who have died with Covid-19 had pre-existing conditions, which were mainly metabolic disorders. This hugely significant fact has been ignored.
Published research has shown that raised blood sugar increases your risk of dying with Covid. Here is a quote from the study, “The cumulative probability of mortality was significantly higher in patients with hyperglycaemia compared to patients with normoglycaemia, independently of pre-existing diabetes.”
Other work has shown that high levels of fructose, which is part of the table sugar molecule, inhibits the ability of immune cells to recognise viral and bacterial pathogens. If our defences cannot see a virus, they cannot fight it.
The effect of metabolic disorders on Covid mortality is also demonstrated by variations in the gut biome. Prevalence of certain bacteria predicted which patients would die from Covid with 96% accuracy. Those bacteria in question proliferate in people with poor diets and poor health.
If the health authorities had used the viral epidemic to advise everyone to avoid ultra-processed food, sugar and refined carbohydrates they could have avoided thousands of Covid deaths and simultaneously reduced the burden of metabolic diseases, from which millions of people suffer.
There is no good evidence that lockdowns work in the long run. However, there is clear evidence that prolonged lockdowns make the entire population more susceptible to severe symptoms when they catch a respiratory virus. Professor Sheldon Cohen has worked for decades on the relationship between prolonged stress and more severe viral infections. He regards chronic social isolation and fear as the most potent stressors for damaging the immune system. Inevitably, lockdowns increase social isolation and fear. Perhaps the new coronavirus variants are not more transmissible; they just seem to be so because now we are all more susceptible.
No harm-to-benefit analysis has been performed for lockdowns, which demonstrates staggering ineptitude and negligence. Other researchers, however, have done this work and state any benefit does not warrant the harm and lockdowns should be eased. People have died in their homes for fear of going to hospital; some have died of cancer because their treatment was curtailed; some have committed suicide because their businesses and lives have been ruined. Psychologists are extremely concerned about the life-altering mental damage caused to millions of young people.
The vast majority of people infected with Sars-CoV-2 do not need hospital treatment, and do not die, because their immune system defeats the virus. The robustness of our immunity is weakened by metabolic syndrome and stress, as mentioned above. However, simple steps can be used to enhance the function of our immune system.
Many people have Vitamin D deficiency in the winter. This study, among many others, shows that those with the lowest level were far more likely to die of Covid19 than those with optimum levels. Supplementation is cheap and readily available. There is no downside to having optimum levels of vital nutrients. People have died of Covid because of Vitamin D deficiency. During the summer we were allowed to exercise outdoors but not allowed to sit in the sunshine, even when alone. This prevented the accumulation of vitamin D stores. Other factors which boost immune systems and general health include a diet of real food, exercise, and good sleep. None of these have been mentioned.
Oxford University have announced they are starting a trial to test the efficacy of the drug Ivermectin. We do not need a trial because we already have robust evidence that Ivermectin is of considerable benefit to seriously ill Covid patients if administered early. Why are they delaying the use of this important, cheap drug?
I would like to see MORI conduct a new poll asking, ‘How confident are you that Sage are doing everything they can to reduce the impact of the virus?’ I wonder what the results would be if they only ask the people who have read the references quoted here.
